Claude in PowerPoint & Excel is here! What Devs Need to Know
Both add-ins just landed on the Marketplace. Right now, paid plans get double the usage limits through March 19, so it's a good time to kick the tires.
PowerPoint Add‑in
It scans your slide master, layouts, fonts, and colors, then spits out new slides that actually match your design. You can build a whole deck from a single prompt, tweak a few slides, or turn a boring bullet list into a chart or diagram.
You get real PowerPoint files, not just screenshots pasted on a slide. Everything it generates is editable, including shapes, charts, and flowchart elements. No locked-down junk.
You can pull in data as you build, so you're not stuck copy-pasting numbers later. You can switch between Sonnet 4.5 and Opus 4.6 models right in the add-in to compare results.
Notes & Beta status:
- No chat history or activity log.
- Prompt injection is a real risk here. If you grab a random template, it might have hidden prompts that mess with your data.
- Polishing the formatting still takes 20 to 40 minutes per slide if you want it to look pro.
- File size cap is 30 MB.
- Still no waterfall, Mekko, or Gantt charts. If you need those, you're out of luck for now.
It's great for drafts and quick tweaks, but don't trust it to send slides straight to clients without a review.
Excel Add‑in
The February update added a few new tricks. Edit pivot tables, adjust chart axes/legends, and add conditional formatting with data bars. Sort, filter, set up data validation, and print areas. Finance tools: toggle gridlines, define print areas. There's a 'Claude Log' tab that tracks every action, so you can debug what happened if something goes sideways. Cross-sheet support means Claude can read your whole workbook, follow links, and actually trace errors like #REF! or #VALUE! back to the cell that broke.
Cost & Competition
- Claude's Office add-ins run $20 a month if you're on the Pro plan.
- Microsoft Copilot for PowerPoint is $30 a month, but you'll need a Microsoft 365 subscription on top of that.
Which one is worth it depends on how much you use Microsoft's ecosystem and whether you prefer native integration or are fine with add‑ins.
Bottom Line
What could be a dealbreaker for bigger teams is that both add-ins are still in beta. Anthropic pushes updates fast, but there is a lack of audit logs, especially in PowerPoint. If you're testing, skip the demo prompts and run your real templates and workflows to see if they actually fit.
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